Sunday Times Scotland editorship for Allardyce

THE Sunday Times has appointed its Scottish political editor to the post of Scotland editor.

Jason Allardyce has been with the paper for eight years since moving from Scotland on Sunday where he was associate editor.

His appointment is the first time the paper has had a Scotland editor since its Scottish edition shed almost three-quarters of its staff almost two years ago, leaving a core team of Mark Macaskill (news – and last year named Reporter of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards), Douglas Alexander (sport) and Gillian Bowditch (column and news features).

Allardyce will continue to cover politics.

The paper’s average sale during February was – according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation – 52,747 versus the average 44,709 for Scotland on Sunday and 30,654 for the Sunday Herald.

He told allmediascotland.com: “The paper remains the best-selling quality newspaper in Scotland and, against market trend, we’ve had two months of rising sales – February representing our best monthly sale since last summer.

“We’ve had a clutch of big agenda-setting Scottish exclusives so far this year, ranging from revealing the Scottish independence referendum will be in autumn 2014 – coinciding with the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn – to Michelle Mone’s first interview on the break up of her 19-year marriage and a Craig Whyte interview which revealed that Rangers could shortly go into administration a matter of weeks before this turned out to be the case.”